In the game of baseball, every general manager’s goal is to build a team that is strong enough to compete for a World Series. Although, baseball is not a fair game, and for a handful of teams like the Oakland Athletics, the only issue is that these players come at a price. When their star player Jason Giambi leaves Oakland for over 100 million dollars more in New York, the Athletics general manager Billy Beane realizes he needs to rethink his strategy. Now targeting undervalued players, Beane and the Athletics look to change the game of baseball. The main character in this baseball novel is Billy Beane. Once a player himself, Beane was predicted by scouts to be one of the best players in the world, but it just never worked out. Now as a general manager, Beane relies on sabermetrics and statistics to project potential prospects, instead of listening to his scouts. Another main character is Billy Beane’s assistant, Paul DePodesta who plays a big role in the Athletics organization. Some of the main players pursued by Beane and DePodesta include Scott Hatteberg, Eric Chavez, Ricardo Rincon, and Chad Bradford. Another player that is talked about a lot in the book is Kevin Youkilis. Youkilis is pursued by Beane many times, but Beane was never able to complete a deal to send Youkilis, who is considered by Beane the “Greek God of Walks”, to Oakland.…show more content… Beane trusted himself and his system, despite what his scouts said. He never lost faith in himself or his ability to change the game of baseball even when it was not looking good for the Athletics. Theres no doubt that there was a lot of risk in Beane’s system. He put trust into players who were ruled out by all twenty-nine other Major League teams, and put himself in jeopardy of losing his job, to try to bring the Athletics from the bottom of the league to the top with a new
